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Instead, France and the US were more disposed toward joining forces in exertingpressure on Aristide to step down. Finally, Aristide departed Haiti for exile on 29February 2004. The circumstances under which this occurred are the subject ofconjecture, with Aristide claiming he was kidnapped, a charge denied by then-USSecretary of State, Colin Powell. 620 On the same day, UNSC Resolution 1529authorized the immediate deployment of a Multinational Interim Force (MIF),comprising 3 000 troops, for 3 months. This operation would be replaced by a UNpeacekeeping mission, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). 621 Thetransition phase was marked by an unfortunate lack of commitment shown by themajor powers, which had spearheaded Aristide’s ouster, and uncertainty regardingthe locus of power in Haiti.Given that the foreign relations of both South Africa and Brazil over the last decadehave been played out in such ideological/rhetorical terms as is evident in Chapters 5and 6, it is necessary to examine the deeper issues implicit in Haiti’s complexinternational history, rather than simply the recounting of ‘facts’, and thus where theengagement of these two emerging powers fits. Since the first US occupation ofHaiti between 1915 and 1934, the country has been portrayed as a key site of USimperialism. Indeed, writing of the 1994 invasion to restore Aristide, Cynthia Weberhas noted,United Nations authorization of U.S. actions in Haiti allowed the United States todecorate its regional effort with flags of many nations…As the list of memberstates in this force grew to more than thirty, it appeared less and less like a“genuine” response by the international community to the Haiti situation and moreand more like the artificial, dissimulated cover for U.S. regional activity that itwas. 622620 The Miami Herald. 2 March, 2004. “Aristide says he was kidnapped”. Accessedonline at: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/haiti/kidnap.htm on 8 December, 2010.621 Einsiedel and Malone, “Peace and Democracy for Haiti?”,164 and Armed ConflictDatabase.622 Cynthia Weber, Faking It: US Hegemony in a “Post-Phallic” Era (Minneapolis andLondon: University of Minnesota Press, 1999): 115.246